A Subconscious Warning Heeded

[MickinMD ★]

A dream Sunday night set me straight!

In mid-November, my sump pump motor was continuously running one morning and would not dump the last 6" of water from the sump well - that's all that was in it and it's a little over 2 feet deep.

Water entering the drain at the bottom of my open, outside basement stairwell is fed under the basement floor to the sump well, so the pump gets a good workout in heavy rains. That also carries very small bits of wood, shingles, stones, and anything else that manages to blow into the stairwell. I'm thinking of putting a cover over it next year.

I tried to clear whatever was blocking the pump with hose pressure (thanks to 60F weather!) and a clothes hanger, the pipes were completely clear, and all seemed ok - though it seemed slow, which I attributed to my being overly worried, and didn't do anything but stir water around if the sump well had 6" or less of water.

My major-June-surgery shoulder still gets sore with a lot of motion and several pounds involved, I've been fighting a sinus infection, and I'm lazy so it was easy to convince myself I had fixed it.  That was a couple weeks ago and fortunately we've only had 1/3" of rain in the few weeks.

Then last weekend's forecast said we're supposed to get rain tonight (Tuesday) into Wednesday. Sunday night I had a dream in which I looked in the basement and saw the floor covered by over a foot of water.

I woke up Monday, looked online for Home Depot's store price for the identical pump, saw three were in stock at the Home Depot closest to me, and decided $82.66 including sales tax was worth the peace of mind my subconscious was warning me about and just replace it. I can let my brother-in-law, who has a part-time business repairing small motors, look at the replaced pump and if it can be repaired cheaply, pay him to do it if so and keep it as a backup - which will still perfectly fit the pipes running from the sump well.

I lugged the new pump and my tools into the basement Monday, then let my shoulder rest overnight.

I installed the new pump this morning, the only trouble being I had to replace two minor things: there was a lot of rust on the threaded bolts of the "stainless steel" hose clamps that hold a semi-hard rubber sleeve I had cleverly placed around the 1 1/2" polypropylene pipe running up from the pump and down from the check valve to make it easy to remove the pump.

When I started the pump up, it quickly pumped everything right down to the bottom of the sump well!  Clearly, something's not right with the old one.

I guess my subconscious was smarter and wiser than conscious me!

[Scrapr ★]

Did your float get repositioned? That "might" explain the last 6 inches <reported> <TWSS>

but always better to know for sure that the sump pump is working

[maddmaxx ★]

I used to have a sump pump like that and it ran a lot.  One of the improvements I made to the house was to have drains inside the basement walls installed and fed to a town culvert out by the street.  The first wet spring we had after the installation we used buckets and stop watches to guesstimate a 150 gal/hr flow.  

It turns out that my house sits on a ledge and all the water in the world flows down the hill and through my yard on top of the ledge and seeps up into my basement.  The passive drain system was one of my better investments.

Now I don't have to wake up in the middle of the night wondering why I don't hear my sump pump.

[donkpow]

Good job.